An Etude in Scarlet
by christine10389
Summary: Excerpt: "John Watson had never considered himself an aficionado of music; rather, he allowed it to wash over him and soothe all the aches and pains, the anxieties and angers of each day. To allow his mind to be filled with harmonies and rhythms was his excuse to not think for just a while, his excuse to be at peace." AU where music brings the two together. Rated T just-in-case


Author's Notes:

This is my first fanfiction, in honor of NaWriMo! Please be kind; I've gone back and forth many times about what I wanted from this story, haha. I'm not a patient person, so I'm publishing what I have and will continue to upload as the chapters are written. Comments/critiques are love 3 Sorry some of the dialogue is clunky. I've been referencing A Study in Scarlet off of project Gutenberg.

John loves music; Sherlock thinks in music. I believe we all know where this is going :) Enjoy.

To whom it may concern: I'm borrowing your characters for a bit, ok? Thanks. :)

* * *

**Prelude**

The tall, thin, dark-haired man is a fortress of silence.

On those rare times he accepts his medication from the nurses, he keeps his features aloof and his verdigris eyes half-lidded, distain and arrogance more clearly pronounced than if he'd decided to employ his words again. He knows his own intelligence, and the doctors knew he would be damned before bowing down to mere mortals in order to be proclaimed as such. So wordlessness remains his coat, and solitude his companion, until the days pass without beginning or end.

In the first few weeks of his confinement, the withdrawal symptoms had been nightmarish. He'd howled and shouted, thrown himself bodily against the walls and floor, fought the nurses (soon joined by security) trying to sedate him…he quickly became the most infamous patient in the ward, dreaded by nurse and prescriber alike. Some of the least-patient nurses wished to board up the door and leave him to decay. Even the most long-suffering of them wanted to put him under sedation permanently.

Then, one day, a well-dressed, slightly overweight man visited the hospital and declared himself the madman's brother. To make the entire situation even more absurd, the visitor carried a box he wished to deliver to the madman personally.

They made him sign the hold-harmless forms and left him to be torn from limb to limb.

Instead, the man left the room perfectly intact but box-less, wishing them a cordial good day. Almost a half hour later, one of the nurses hears something and turns away from her computer screen. After a moment, everyone can hear it and is standing still. The madman's nurse runs to his room (as that's where the noise is loudest) and opens the door.

He's standing in the center of the room, facing the sunlit window, cradling a violin that positively glows beneath the incandescent lightbulbs. But he isn't just holding the thing, he is drawing the bow across the strings so lovingly that the instrument is singing at his fingertips. He stands there, playing movement after movement of nameless, breathtaking music, for hours on end, stopping only when the next nurse on duty tapped hesitantly on the door like always.

He didn't speak again after that day, but neither did he fight or rage. Maybe something had broken inside of him while he played. Maybe something had mended. No one knew. The only certain thing was that his name faded into obscurity once more, peace prevailing once again. Soon, he is walking calmly through the corridors and sitting in the common areas, just watching the people around him. Some afternoons, he plays his violin again, just as wonderously as the first time.

The madman reads as much as his umbrella-carrying brother will deliver to him, at first pretending to be uninterested in the gifts, then running to them (carefully piled atop the room's only chair) as soon as the man leaves. The doctors can never understand the brothers' animosity, especially after asking the visitor about it. "I'm his arch nemesis," the well-dressed man says with a strange, unassuming smile. "Well, he thinks so. He is so terribly melodramatic."

oOo

The short, weather-beaten blonde man is a fortress of shaky resilience.

_What is a doctor without his patients?_ he thinks bitterly, watching his sister shuffle out of the meeting room while leaning heavily on a nurse. He leans back in the chair, unwilling to leave the hospital just yet, drumming his fingers on the handle of his cane. The conversation hadn't gone well, and that was an understatement. Harry needed hospice care that much was certain, but neither of them could pay. Hell, he himself could hardly make it to the hospital every week to see his ailing sibling, much less keep a job. His gaze falls from the now-closed door to his emaciated body, mostly hidden by the long pants and coats appropriate for Fall. The war hadn't treated him well; if the infection he'd gotten during the surgery to remove the bullet wasn't bad enough, the nightmares born from the fighting made life unbearable. As a man with a hard-earned medical degree, he should have a job by now (six months in the country should've been more than enough time) but his residual limp clouded his image and experience in the eyes of his potential employers. He could hear the maxim echoing through their minds every time they shook his hand, wishing him good-bye and a polite good riddance: _Doctor, heal thyself!_

He sighs, and stands. Abruptly, he hates it all, every lousy card in the miserable hand he'd been dealt. He walks through the hospital corridors angrily, ignoring completely his fellow souls. Finally, when he's wandered long enough to be alone in the park, he sighs to the sky.

_This silence is killing me._

**First Movement: The Criterion Bar**

John Watson had never considered himself an _aficionado_ of music; rather, he allowed it to wash over him and soothe all the aches and pains, the anxieties and angers of each day. To allow his mind to be filled with harmonies and rhythms was his excuse to not think for just a while, his excuse to be at peace.

He would listen to anything (the "oldies" from his childhood and adolescence stirring nostalgia more than anything), but his absolute favorite has to be music from the symphony and orchestra. He would never _go_ to a concert hall to experience it (just the thought of being stuck in a dark room with hundreds of rustling strangers and those few crying babies was enough to put him on edge), but to hear the masterpieces over the noises of London's rushing blood gave the city around him a friendly glow. The music allowed the city to be whittled down to its basest elements: the people, the architecture, and the weather. When he let the music surround him, he is no longer alone, because without the noise to join them, the people outside are also alone, each in their own world. He can see the infinite, isolated worlds rushing about him, but he cannot see into the windows; sometimes it bothers him but he makes sure to forget it quickly. All of this gives him peace, and creates his good days.

Today, however, is a Bad Day.

The flat stinks; his shoulder and knee ache; his rental contract is nearly expired but he can't rouse the courage to go down to the lease manager's office and sign a new one. He is hyper-aware of the formed, deadly thing hiding calmly in his desk drawer. His customary music is grating on his nerves, and that is the final straw that slams his laptop closed and whisks him downstairs, into the waiting arms of mother nature.

The day is beautiful, and one deep breath of the warm air dilutes his rage. As he breathes, he is calmed, and his usual melancholy returns. The park isn't full of people, but dense enough to enunciate his isolation. John sighs, and just as he makes the decision to leave the park, he sees the chalkboard sign on the nearby pavement that sends shocks of nostalgia through his being.

_The Criterion Bar_ the sign says. _Open until 1 a.m._

"Uni," he laughs quietly, shaking his head. Before he has thought twice, he's sitting at one of the mahogany tables, excellent cup of tea in his hand.

"In the old days that was a hell of a lot stronger, Watson!" a distantly familiar voice jibes at his elbow, and the speaker proceeds to clap him on the back. John turns and is surprised to see Mike, of all people! They'd never been great friends in school, but it is the first familiar face that John has seen since his surgery. John's eyes sting for a moment and he grins like a maniac.

"Stanford!" he shouts, and shakes the fat man's hand enthusiastically. They're both laughing and grinning now, and John waves Mike into the other empty chair.

"Last I'd heard you were abroad getting shot at!" the other man laughs, adjusting his glasses. "What happened?"

John laughs grimly, clenching his fist under the table to quell the tremors. "I got shot." A moment of silence, ringing with embarassment. "You're still at St. Bart's then?"

It is Mike's turn to laugh grimly. "Teaching now. Bright young things, like we used to be. God, I hate them!" John chuckles and Mike looks out the window to the park. "You're living nearby, then?"

John pauses, his morning freshly raw in his mind. He pauses, and a note is struck in his mind. He leaps. "I'm looking for a new place, actually. Trying to solve the problem of whether it is possible to get a nice place at a reasonable price."

Mike grins, almost to himself. "Funny thing, Watson: you're the second man to say that to me today," he muses thoughtfully.

The impulsive decision is still echoing through John's mind, and those echoes become stronger. "Really? That's fantastic. Who was it?"

Mike laughs aloud, waving for John to forgive his rudeness. "I'll take you to meet him right now," he says eventually, wiping tears from his eyes, "but you can't blame me if you don't get on."

Their journey isn't a short one, but John is happy to walk in the good weather. Mike staves off all his questions en route, so John is bursting with impatience by the time they reach their destination: the chemical labs at the hospital.

John can hear a strange, distant music as the two of them make their ways through the empty, sterilized halls, and if it hadn't been for that, the place would've made him grim. As a doctor, hospitals didn't bother him, but as a patient, he couldn't stand them. Being here in a non-official capacity leant his mind towards the latter.

The music grew stronger as they reached their destination, until they passed through a final door and he was met with a radio, blaring it into an empty room.

No, the room isn't empty: a tall, dark-haired man stood at the far end of the long table, peering through one of the older microscopes without regard to the newcomers. The music on th radio swells, then goes into a quieter movement. Mike clears his throat and the man looks up, glancing briefly between them.

The man reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a small, thin piece of plastic, connected to his pocket with a long black wire. The man adjusts it in his hand and John realizes it is the numeric keyboard from an old cell phone.

_Wha…_ he starts to think, and the man's hand twiches, pressing the keys in unknown sequences so rapidly that John can't follow the movement. A heartbeat, then,

"Mike, may I borrow your phone? There's no signal on mine."

The voice is synthesized, but not irritating, and coming from the man's general direction. John blinks, suddenly thinking of Stephen Hawking. The music goes through a strange scale and evens out again.

Mike shrugs. "Sorry, left it in my office."

John digs his own out of his pocket and holds out his phone. "You're free to use mine."

The man moves closer, his height becoming very apparent by the time he takes the proffered mobile. He glances at John once more, and for the first time, John can see the true intensity of his gaze. The look reaches beyond clinical; it is a camera, an X-ray, and a MRI all at once; it freeze-dries him and affixes him to a microscope slide, then sends a solar-grade beam of light through him to the eyepiece. The music crescendoes, then rests, and the moment is broken. John swallows and fights the urge to snatch his phone and run.

The man moves his hand from the phone to his keypad; his thumb twitches, then a question:

"Afganistan or Iraq?" The radio is silent for another moment.

John blinks, shifts on his feet. "Excuse me?" He glances at Mike, who is wearing a bemused grin. "Did you tell him?"

The man rolls his eyes and hands the phone back. "I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that bother you?"

John gapes, brow furrowed. The man takes his lack of response as a negative, and continues. "Let's see, what else…I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulking when I do that. Just leave me be, and I'll soon be fine. What have you to confess?" His eyes glimmer. "Two fellows should know the worst of one another before they begin to live together."

John laughs his astonishment aside, answering in spite of himself. "I stay away from rows, and I get up at all sorts of ungodly hours, and I am a bit lazy." For a fleeting second, John feels the cane in his hand, and his leg twinges, but then the music plays its theme again, and the man is speaking.

"Do you include violin-playing in your category of rows?" he asks, a slight worry on his face.

John shrugs. "It depends on the player. A well-played violin is divine—a badly-played one—"

The man laughs, good humor restored. "Oh, that's all right. I think we may consider the thing as settled—that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you."

John blinks again, suddenly realizing anew the absurdity of the situation. "I don't know where we're going…I don't even know your name!" he says incredulously, the man seemingly ignoring him, simultaneously moving past him to the door and donning his coat and scarf.

Halfway through the door, the man pauses and leans against the frame. The music is in its last, triumphant finale. "The name is Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221b Baker Street."

He glances at Mike, and nods. "Good afternoon."

The door closes. The post-fermata silence is deafening.


End file.
